Translator was given asylum by tribunal

PM to look again at refusal to hand out special treatment

Under fire ... Iraqi insurgents aiming rockets at a US base near Baghdad this week. Translators and other people working with the occupying forces fear that they will be especially targeted as 'collaborators' by insurgents and want special treatment from the UK. Photograph: US army/AP

An Iraqi translator was granted asylum this year in a case that has significant implications for the government's refusal to give special treatment to people who say they could be killed if abandoned by British troops, the Guardian can reveal.

Gordon Brown, the prime minister, agreed yesterday to "look again" at the question of Iraqi interpreters working for the British armed forces. It followed reports that the Iraqis would not receive any favourable treatment for asylum in the UK despite pressure from army officers.

The interpreters say they risk being killed if they are abandoned when British troops leave Iraq. There have been several reports of Iraqis being killed or intimidated for "collaborating" with foreign troops in Iraq. The Ministry of Defence said yesterday they could not confirm the reports.

The issue was highlighted in April this year when an asylum and immigration tribunal in Birmingham granted asylum to an Iraqi translator who made his way to Britain via Syria. The judges ruled that someone who "has worked as a translator or in any other way such as to be regarded by insurgents as a collaborator with the multinational force and who has been targeted by a significant insurgent group is a person who at present faces a real risk of persecution". The Iraqi, who was a translator for US forces and cannot be named, fled Iraq for Syria in February 2005. He arrived in Britain three months later after being hidden on a ship. The Home Office admitted in the case that a "strategic goal" of Iraqi insurgents was to "target people who facilitate the occupation".

The possible fate of the Iraqis has arisen now in light of reports that Downing Street told an Iraqi who has worked for the British army for three years that he could not expect any favours. It told him that he was not eligible for asylum and suggested he went to another country to apply for a visa. A British officer said Britain had a "moral responsibility" to help the man.

Des Browne, the defence secretary, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday that the government took its duty of care to Iraqis who work for the armed forces "very seriously". But he said as many as 20,000 Iraqis had worked for Britain's armed forces since the invasion in 2003. However, he accepted that interpreters, of which there have been more than 90, might be particularly vulnerable.

Mr Browne said: "People have to understand the scale and complexity of this issue. We will move at the appropriate pace to get this policy right, in relation to our duty of care to all of those who we have a responsibility to."

Whitehall officials said yesterday they were concerned about the number of people, in Afghanistan as well as Iraq, who felt they deserved special treatment. However, a major problem for them is that they must apply for asylum in Britain.

Human rights groups welcomed Mr Brown's decision yesterday to reconsider the refusal to grant special asylum but said it did not go far enough. Tom Porteous, London director of Human Rights Watch, said: "The UK has been shamefully slow to respond to the massive Iraqi refugee crisis ... It should now move very quickly not only to grant asylum to those Iraqis who have served the British in Iraq but also to provide significant assistance to those countries that are bearing the brunt of the crisis."

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the UK's Refugee Council said there were now 2.2 million Iraqi refugees in the Middle East. Jordan and Syria, which had been very generous in providing protection, were straining to cope and urgently needed assistance, they said.

Denmark, which will shortly withdraw from Iraq, has agreed to help 60 Iraqis and their families who worked for its forces.